Best and Worst Writers

The writers below are ranked based on the average quality of their episodes after taking into account when the episodes aired. Only writers who wrote at least two episodes by themselves are in the list. Writers who wrote fewer than two episodes by themselves are combined into the "Other Writers" category. Writers are given half credit for episodes that they co-write with another person except for "Calvary," for which each of the writers gets one-third credit. For the purposes of best and worst episode, writers get full credit/blame for solo and co-written episodes. Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain are treated as if they are a single writer.

The number in parentheses can be thought of as being the "Joss bonus." It represents how many more points episode written by this person would get if it were written by Joss Whedon instead. Lower numbers suggest that the writer is almost as good as Joss Whedon. High numbers suggest that Joss Whedon could have done a much better job. By definition, Joss Whedon gets a 0 on this statistic. This interpretation assumes that the writer of the episode is the main cause of the episode's quality.

19. David H. Goodman (22.30)

Conclusion

With the exception of Drew Goddard, most writers from Buffy do better on Angel than they do on Buffy. Overall, the writers account for 22.7% of episode quality beyond what can be explained by when an episode aired.